Write Me a List
by Blackrose Kitsune
Summary: Just think it over, write me a list, so we can figure out what we both deserve. She hardly could believe it, that their love had come to this: dividing, deciding his and hers...


_**Write Me a List**_

XXxxxXX

The bittersweet aroma of stale, day-old coffee circulated on the air around them, mingling with the ever-present odor of cooking grease and thick heat radiating through the room that the air conditioner, rattleing painfully in the corner, just couldn't quite dispel. Yet despite the heat — both from the outside world where she guessed it had to be at least in the nineties and likewise inside with such poor ventilation — she was unreasonably cold.

"Just think it over," the man sitting before her said slowly, his voice tight, constricted as though he were struggling to keep his tone smooth. There was a full mug of coffee in his hand, he had ordered it upon their coming in, but had yet to drink from it.

She bit her lip, trembling as it was, and blinked back her tears. She couldn't believe it. This was the man she loved. The man she had grown up with her whole life. How could this have happened?

Regarding him slowly, she let out a shaky breath. He still had the same features he had held as a boy; Rough chestnut eyes — eyes that had seen far too much death and suffering in his young life — that beneath a layer of ice, did hold some semblance of warmth; a smooth young face untouched by their age; the same hair — sleek, raven-black, unkempt since it hadn't been slicked back that morning — everything about him was the same. He was still the man who had fallen in love with her, and he was still the same man that she had fallen in love with.

So… what had changed?

Things had been wonderful between them once. They had been happy newlyweds, albeit struggling on their feet, with a quaint little house of their own, a steady income and first and foremost, they loved each other. But, somewhere along the line, she guessed, that had changed.

Thinking about it, she should have known it would happen. The memories washed over her sharply, playing before her eyes like a movie in fast forward.

Koenma had shown up at their doorstep one evening — a quiet spring evening, if she recalled correctly — something like a year into their into their happy union, with the unsettling news that Enki's quiet rule in Makai was being challenged. The new Tantei, a well intentioned, but softhearted young girl, just wasn't up to par and couldn't handle the rebellions and riots. Mukuro, still quietly seething her loss to Enki, refused to help matters, and Yomi was still away with his son. Oh, how he hated to ask, having sworn that Yuusuke was _fired_, not needed. But, what choice did the young demi-god have?

In the end, Yuusuke — her beloved, who had sworn off his job after the incidents in Makai and Raizen so many years ago — had been reinstated as Reikai Tantei, amid her tearful protesting that he had _promised_ her that he was through living that life.

But eventually, once things in Makai started to die down again — when things should have gone back to normal for them — other things, little things that the new Tantei could have handled, just started coming up. Oh, Koenma would apologize. He would ramble nonsensical things, going on and on about how sorry he was to ask this of Yuusuke, but she knew he meant none of it. If anything, the Godling was relieved — happy even — to have his old lackey back.

And so it was that Yuusuke came to take up his old job once more. Missions had come and gone; and at first it was fine: He would come home tired, but feeling accomplished and she would rejoice having him with her another night rather than having him dead in a ditch somewhere in Makai as she so often feared. But gradually, and it just happened that way, over time and largely unnoticed in small stretches — only realized when she took time to look back on the whole ordeal — he came home less and less. When he did, he was always quiet, withdrawn. Cold, even. He would push her away, get angry and leave for days at a time and she wouldn't hear hide or hair of him. Ever since he had re-accepted his job as Tantei, a distance had grown between them. And, over time, what had been a small crack, had evolved into an unbridgeable abyss, a chasm with both ends so far from view that there was no getting around to the other side.

She supposed that was why they were here now.

He couldn't meet her eyes as the next words fell from his lips, but kept them staring, resolutely, into the depths of his coffee cup, his own deep chestnut gaze lost amid the sea of black swill and cold dregs dancing in the mug before him. "Write me a list, so we can figure out what we both deserve."

Another shaky breath — a jagged exhalation that shook with unbidden tears and unwilled emotion. "Fine," she whispered hoarsely, nodding slowly and allowing her hair to fall around her shoulders. Trembling, her hand reached out across the table and grabbed for a napkin. Laying it before her, she stared at it, her vision swimming in and out of focus behind the thin veil of liquid pooling in the corners of her eyes.

"Miss? Excuse me?"

The waitress whom she had addressed, a young girl, not much younger than herself, she suspected, who had been passing the tables, going on rounds with her coffee pitcher, stopped at being addressed. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Might I borrow your pen?"

For a moment, the girl looked startled, as though taken aback by the request. But, shortly, she reached into the pocket of her blouse and handed the pen to her.

"Thank you," she breathed quietly, taking up the pen slowly, concentrating on keeping her hand from shaking too much. Once the girl had scurried away, busy with other customers congesting the small roadside restaurant, she turned once again to the dog-eared napkin lying before her. "A list?" She sighed quietly, "Oh, Yuusuke is that all you want?"

He didn't answer — didn't think he could without his voice betraying him — merely sat, rigid, stiff-backed, in the hard, vinyl booth and stirred his cold coffee. The rhythmic _clink, clink, clink_ of his spoon against the porcelain mug and the scratching of her pen were the only sounds from either of them for several minutes to follow.

He sighed deeply, his shoulders sagging under the weight of the unimaginable burden placed upon him. What had happened to them? he wondered. How had it ended this way? Dividing; deciding who got what? And, what would she take? Their home? Their car? Their property? The fact that she had taken his heart had been bad enough. Worse still, the fact that she had thrown it back at him and left it bleeding and bruised at his feet in the end. Not that he blamed her for the end result; it was no more her fault than his own

The very way he had been when they were younger, and he was the Reikai Tantei, was exactly the way he was now, once again. That was why he had quit, or had gotten fired, the first time. Or, whatever it had been that he had done. He had done it so that he could live a normal life, or at least a relatively normal one. He had done it for her. And then, he had gone back; just dropped everything for the sake of the damned Toddler, and what did he have to show for it? A broken home, a relationship that stood on its last leg, and more trouble than he had gone into the whole ordeal with, that was for sure. Her reaction was what he should have expected, he knew. And he had expected it, to a degree. But he knew the day that Koenma had shown up at their door that he would go back — much as he hated to admit it, he missed the job — and he knew that as a result he would lose her. And, he guessed, he had.

But, just how much more would she take? How much more could he stand to lose?

He supposed the list she was scribbling away at would tell him all he needed to know.

Blue ribbons of ink unfurled atop the ragged paper like flowers blossoming, steady and undisturbed. As the pen flew across the paper, the writing shaky and almost unintelligible, for she simply could not steady her hand, she struggled to keep her eyes dry. The words exploding from the end of her pen were blurry to her, hazy and unclear. A line of blue that went on with no discernable end, all words strung together in a continuous line until her thoughts ran dry, ending the upsurge of words from the pen in a sudden motion.

The pen slipped from her loosened grip and she blinked, feeling to her disdain, a treacherous tear slipping from the corner of her eye, and dripping innocently to the napkin. The tear seeped into the thin paper instantly, skewing words as the liquid spread in a perfect circle from the point of contact. Biting her lip she turned away, the hair falling in her face to mask her eyes as she stared resolutely in the opposite direction. Fumbling blindly for the napkin in front of her, she turned it over and, still without so much as taking time to glance up at the man opposite her pushed it across the table, her hand shaking horribly.

"You know this isn't easy for me," she choked quietly, her voice thick with tears that she would not allow herself to cry. Not in front of him. Not like this. So, to keep from crying — which she would surly start doing if she looked at him, for any sign of a response to what was happening — she stared defiantly at the door. A mere dozen feet away, though in her position, seeming thousands of miles.

It took everything he had to reach for the napkin _after _she had pulled her hand away. Oh, how he wished to just take her hand and tell her everything would be all right. How he longed to just touch her. But, he couldn't. This was neither the time, nor the place for it. They both knew it. So, much as it killed him, he let her draw back her trembling hand before reaching for the note that she had turned from his eyes.

Pulling the paper towards himself, a sick, nauseous feeling swept over him, a hot coil of disgust and regret writhing in his stomach, a lump rising in his throat. He hardly dared to look at the list. In fact, he was sure he would rather not know. He had already lost so much, after all. Just how much more would be sacrificed?

But, waiting and drawing out the inevitable never was his style. With a deep breath of resolve he shut his eyes, scrunching his eyelids together tightly, and flipped the napkin over. After hesitating for a few moments, he slowly opened his eyes and stared — squinted really — down at the tiny flowing words.

"_Honesty, sincerity, tenderness and trust.  
__A little less time for the rest of the world, and more for the two of us.  
__Kisses each morning, "I love you's" at night, just like it used to be.  
__The way life was when you were in love with me."_

He stared, rereading the paper two, three times to make sure that his eyes weren't deceiving him, which he thought highly possible as with each consecutive read-through his vision became distinctly more blurred by tears. He couldn't believe it. He just… couldn't. Yet, there was the proof, in ink, before him.

"I-I don't know where to start…" he mumbled coarsely in disbelief, struggling to regain the use of his voice, which cracked in resistance as though resisting being called upon.

In the time it had taken him to turn over the napkin, read the words she had written upon it, and make sense of them, she had gotten up, crossed the room and headed for the door. At his words, she looked back at him, the tears in her eyes beading silent trails down her cheeks. "Everything on that list in your hands, is written somewhere in your heart."

And, with a quiet sob and a final fleeting glance, she did what she knew had to be done; the only thing left that made sense. With a shaky hand and a feeble push, she swung the door of the restaurant open, a gust of hot air whipping over her as she met it head-on, and was gone.

XXxxxXX

**_Author's Ramblings: _****Disclaimers: **I don't own the YYH characters in this fic, they belong to Yoshihiro Togashi and all third parties holding rights to the copyright. **And**, I do not own the song that inspired this fic, nor the lyrics to it, of which most of my dialogue is a complete ripoff. The song in question, Rodney Atkins' "Honesty (Write Me a List)" belongs to him, the writers and composers. Please don't sue, as I'm broke and have no money.

**Anyhow, you know the drill:** Please leave your name at the door with honest opinions intact. The muse adores them, and they distract her from the daunting task of killing me for ignoring her so long, so I appreciate them too.

Blackrose


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